A non-profit organization dedicated to the eradication of all student loan debt through activism, education, and legislation;
because student loan debt is dangerous to the US economy and to the health and well-being of individual Americans and their families.
CRYN JOHANNSEN, Founder & Executive Director

7 comments:

As I state clearly and in-depth in my book, and as I have stated here and in countless articles that can be easily found, the problem is a collective crisis. It affects you even without you realizing it. I presume you are a taxpayer. If you are a taxpayer, then this crisis is hurting you, and at one point the student lenders stole millions and millions and millions of dollars from you, me, and other taxpayers. In addition, the student loan crisis is hurting the overall economy, and that affects you and your family. Unless you have direct ties to the lending industry, then you are not benefiting from it. Quite the opposite. The problem is bigger than YOU. The problem is a collective problem, as I succinctly discuss, again, in my book, on my blog, and in article after article. Americans need to reclaim collective thinking and get away from this individualism - it's hurting us in immeasurable ways.

Trolls: go buy my book to understand my points and stop trolling. You must be paid some pathetic hourly rate by the lenders to continually post the same remarks - so buy the book to read the facts. Thanks!

New defaults are going down and have been for some time. What will always go up is the pool of loans which are in default. This is because, unlike other lenders, the government does not "charge off" debts that default. Chargeoffs are extremely rare with direct and guaranteed federal loans. The current pool of defaulted loans includes loans which entered repayment during the 1980s and 1990s. Once in default, you are in default even if you have reduced the balance to 50 dollars. The only ways out of default are payment in full, rehabilitation, and consolidation. Payment in full can occur voluntarily or involuntarily (wage garnishment and tax refund collection). Thus every quarter the pool of existing defaulted loans will increase, even (for a few years, at least), if new lending were to end tomorrow. That is the life cycle of the federal program. New regulations make it much easier for defaulted borrowers to rehabilitate their loans but unfortunately many of them re-default. With a debt jubilee I think the schools should have to repay some of the funds they benefited by from those loans; I apologize if you have already covered this issue.

Cryn Johannsen

Cryn Johannsen, Founder and Executive Director of All Education Matters, Inc., is the author Solving the Student Loan Crisis: Dreams, Diplomas, and a Lifetime of Debt(New Insights Press, 2016; available now on Amazon inpaperback andKindle).

She has spent many years in academic environments, giving her an insider's understanding of the varying forms of educational institutions and how they function. Ms. Johannsen worked for an academic publishing company, but now advocates for individuals who are struggling or unable to pay off their student loan debt on Capitol Hill.

In addition to her previous employment, Ms. Johannsen has been a student at multiple levels at multiple institutions, beginning at a community college, graduating with honors from the University of Kansas, and receiving MAs from both the University of Chicago and Brown University (where she also participated in an exchange scholar program with Harvard). She is an experienced researcher and instructor, and has focused her own education on the study of History and the Social Sciences.

Ms. Johannsen is available to give talks and do workshops on this critical topic.

Ms. Johannsen's book has been reviewed by the New York Review of Books in Rana Foroohar's article "How the Financing of May Lead to Leader." In addition, intellectuals, such as Henry Giroux and Andrew Ross endorsed it.

This blog, All Education Matters, will be digitally archived by the Library of Congress in November of 2017.

About me

Author of Solving the Student Loan Crisis: Dreams, Diplomas & a Lifetime of Debt (New Insights Press) - now available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle.
Founder and Executive Director of All Education Matters(AEM), a 501(c)(4); I am a freelance journalist for The Huffington Post, The Loop 21, and Hypervocal. My work has appeared in USA Today, Truthout.org, The New England Journal of Higher Education, etc.
Recipient of journalism grant from the Economic Hardship and Reporting Project (EHRP) to cover a story about suicides and student loan debt (published by the Huffington Post and on the EHRP site; edited by Barbara Ehrenreich and Garvy Rivlin) - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/c-cryn-johannsen/student-loan-debt-suicides_b_1638972.html